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[SPOILER]I unlocked the cartographer and the lady. What does the lady do? Rerroll world? Respect? Can I change the difficulty? Will the cartographer still be open in NG+?
[/SPOILER]

[SPOILER]The lady starts new game+ and the cartographer takes you to the mapworks, which is basically the post-game content. I advise checking the mapworks to make sure it's unlocked, then heading into NG+, as in NG+ the mapworks are available as soon as you reach the Estherian Enclave by using the warp portal. BEWARE, THOUGH: NG+ characters can NOT play with non-plus characters. The shared stash works fine, though.[/SPOILER]

Trying to do a melee Outlander, for now he's a bit, squishy... Ofcourse, with dodge capping at 75%, it's a bit depressing. I thought of akimbo, poison applying Outlander with blade pact and stunning glave and fiery leap for mobility.

Godsdamn mana wisps in terrochs rift. They're not especially problematic but I hated those spirit-throwers in the watchweald temple and these guys are even worse. Anything that does a fair amount of damage that homes in is automatically not on my christmas card list.

Been playing just a little off and on between sessions on GW2 - my only real gripe is that the screen feels cramped (23" 1080P) compared to D3. I could see much more of what was going on in D3. Are there any mods that pull the camera out even further?

Finally getting around to playing this properly. So far enjoying it - nothing revolutionary but exactly what works for me, which was the same for the first Torchlight. Mucking about with a frost/shock Embermage, primarily using frost for main combat and shock for the passives and the thunder cloud: lots of things getting frozen and random effects bouncing around everywhere. Very enjoyable. Probably not Game of the Year material but it scratches my ARPG itch very pleasantly.

Originally Posted by MeltdownInteractiveMedia

C'mon.. you telling me you and your friends never got your PC's all into one room and linked up for a late night dungeon crawling LAN session? Those were some of my best gaming times.

Well no, I can't say I've ever attended a LAN night but I never really had the interest to either. I find that these sort of games work best when I focus on them all alone.

The starting spells for both frost and shock trees (frost bolt and prismatic bolt or something like that) are really good, especially with the passives in play. Not sure if it's the most effective build but it's certainly killing everything without a problem so far for me.

As said, prismatic something (1st skill in the electric tree) should get you safely to Act 3. I put the remaining points into the passive wand skill, passive skill that freezes monsters when one dies, storm and flame pillars. Also two points into each passive that does elemental damage, I don't think any more is necessary.

My embermage tips:
-Prismatic Bolt. Level it up rather high.
\: When it and your level is high enough, put one point each into the electric, ice and fire 'brand skill. That's the one at the bottom right of the trees that does a bonus burst of damage if the enemy is burnt/frozen/shocked. Obviously put more points in the respective skill if you're going fully into one tree.
-Charge Mastery is useful earlier on. The higher your level and gear, the less you'll need it, so you won't need to max it. Get to 6/7 and have done.
-Frost Phase is necessary as an escape act. You only need one point into it, if you're going the traditional route of long ranged mage.
-Prismatic Rift is great at stopping melee from hitting you. Its effect, of teleporting an enemy away from you, has obvious benefits. Most importantly, it works before damage.
-Death's Bounty is a weird one. I strongly recommend it, as what it does is cast a mark over your target and a few close by. When a marked enemy is killed, energy bolts fly out to you and recover your health and mana. More points into it also slow down effected enemies. There is a drawback - before investing significantly into it, it has a large cast time. This can actually harm you more than the health benefit initially.

A lot of other things are up for grabs. Just fiddle around with stuff you like the look of and go from there. Much later level skills I can recommend:
-Flame Pillar is great for weirdish AoE, but at the very least builds up your Charge really well.
-Astral Ally is a late game spell, but it's really awesome for that time because it creates a nice distraction away from the mobs that can hot-shot you at that stage. Obviously not amazing for general mob clearance, not in that it's weak, but you have to invest several points to reduce the up-time deficit that goes with the long cooldown. It does, however, make it a fantastic spell to use against champions and bosses for a significant damage upgrade.

Other things:
-Shocking Orb is another high level spell. I think it's awful. It summons a lightning ball that fires shocks out from it. It fires out in the direction you're facing though, not where the mouse is. I also think it doesn't do enough damage for its investment.
-Frozen Fate is...probably a good move. I never got it, but I can imagine it being very useful for ranged mages.
-Staff Mastery is probably quite useful; staves provide the base damage over wands (which do have higher DPS). Some skills take damage from wands or staves (and base damage/magic) so whichever you go for in the end, put points into this or, respectively Wand Chaos.

A new patch was released yesterday, fixing some bugs and tweaking a few skills. Nerfs all around.

Our second patch has just gone live - here are the notes!

We continue to be hard at work on changes for the NEXT patch, as well as the mod kit. Also, secret fun stuff!
Thanks, everybody!

Patch 1.12.X.7 Notes

This patch increments the save version, and we restructured some of the boss rooms, so random levels will clear and repopulate their monsters and events.

FUNCTIONAL
*Shared stash now creates a backup of itself
*You can no longer 'steal' items from your buyback tab by closing the window with Spacebar
*Can’t drag merchant items onto the buyback tab
*Gambler does not show 'can't equip' X
*CTRL-M will instantly toggle map visibility
*Pet equipment cannot get sockets from enchantment
*Fixed rare crash related to Charming a monster
*Multiplayer logging is reduced, and can be disabled with the NEVERLOG commandline argument (may improve performance for some clients)
*Creating a player in a difficulty other than Normal, directly joining a game, and then exiting, won't revert your stored difficulty to Normal.
*Confirmation box added for quitting without saving
*Fixed a few rare hardware related crashes
*Particle update optimizations
*Various rendering optimizations

GAMEPLAY
*Fixed an issue in multiplayer where non-killing MP players did not receive appropriate XP falloff due to level delta
*Armor Degrade properties now apply properly - degrade armor values are reduced for newly generated item properties to compensate for them working correctly - but don't worry, they will be better than before!
*Zero walkspeed monsters won't attempt to jump down
*Fixed some display issues with Fame level progress
*Wandering (non-town-based) Enchanters have a slightly better range of enchantment strengths. They also now have an approximately 20% chance to get a 'powerful enchantment', which are about 50% better than normal. This is represented by a sound and text message in game.
*Swamp Flier scream debuff will show an appropriate name on debuff icon
*Creep squish blood now has a censored version
*Fixed a few areas where loot from a specific event spawned publicly
*Fixed a few spelling errors
*Act 4 banner should properly display
*Pets can be sent to town from the last 2 boss rooms
*Fixed an issue where occasionally an errant MOUSEUP event could ignore your attack in extremely fast click situations
*DOTs now correctly calculate bonuses from +DMG%
*XP and Fame %bonuses from gear are now capped at +/- 100%
*HP bonus gear will properly be reflected in final health of player to other clients post-zoning
*Game can be saved at any time from the options menu
*Onscreen notification in bottom right of screen when saving takes place
*Console-created items now have an effect that displays that they were cheat-created
*Damage reduction effects on the player are capped to 75%
*Stat expenditures when leveling up are properly synchronized in multiplayer
*When leveling up, your health is properly recalculated on other clients
*Skill cycle keys can now be bound to mouse buttons
*Transmuted items are no longer destroyed if an inventory is full with no place to accept them

SKILLS
*Berserkers are still targetable while performing Savage Rush
*Bramble walls and Ice Prison will properly die offscreen, and if the originator leaves the zone
*Battle Standard's properties are properly exclusive (they don't stack)
*Fixed charged versions of Fire Bash from levels 9-15 using the incorrect effects (weaker when charged!)
*Howl duration fixed (Extended)
*Berserker Wolf Shade master healing property was reduced from 5%+5% per rank to 5% + 2% per rank - and the first rank properly provides healing
*Vortex Hex won't target smashables
*Fixed two ranks of Seismic Slam incorrectly doing electrical damage
*Glaive Throw has had a damage nerf (25% reduction in max damage and decreased growth per rank ) with less additional bounces per tier
*Elemental attunement properly benefits from owner’s level
*Elemental Boon should properly speed up cast time on last rank
*Shadowbind should properly rank up duration
*Blast Cannon’s armor reduction effect no longer stacks and works for both fire and physical damage
*Fixed sped up hitframe for male shield skill anim so that it is never skipped when a subsequent skill is queued
*Outlander Long Range Mastery should now affect wands as well
*Prismatic Bolt gains charge at half the previous rate
*Spider Mines should show debuff icons
*Spider Mine summon duration fixed
*Shadowling procs from wand chaos or weapon affixes properly last 20 seconds instead of 3
*Elemental Attunement shouldn’t attack smashables
*Tremor rank 6 should properly perform its charged effect
*Immobilization Copter damage effect shouldn’t stomp on other damage effects
*Berserker Retaliation can only trigger once per second per given target – and no longer procs/leeches
*Rapid Fire and Venomous Hail now use DPS instead of Damage

SCRIPTING
*Fixed some issues with Grom's arena in multiplayer when another player speaks to the NPC while the main area is completed
*Several boss rooms have had structural changes to make it more difficult to cheese them with certain skills
*Various minor level scripting or layout repairs
*Fixed farmable Gel phasebeast room so that XP gain isn't overblown
*Fixed various other farmable phasebeast unitspawners which incorrectly granted XP
*Fixed a few areas where the player could get stuck

NETWORKING
*Fixed a case where backlog of messages for resend would escalate and disconnect the client
*Friends-only games are fixed to synch correctly across lobbies
*Fixes for various serverside issues
*Erroneous ‘Connection Failed’ messages should be fixed
*Games can now be filtered near your level

GRAPHICAL
*Many wardrobe tweaks and fixes

BORING
*Various alterations were made to better support translated versions of the game, and to detect and deal with other language items during trading

I don't mind them nerfing abilities, but I would have like some buffs as well. The Outlander's problem isn't just that Glaive Throw is too good, but also that his other skills aren't good enough.

Has anyone tried out hardcore mode yet? I've lost a lot of good characters to HC Elite. My damage output is usually pretty good but sooner or later I walk into an inescapable situation or get killed by a frost mage that's barely visible at the edge of the screen. The game is fun but there are some flaws that become glaringly obvious on higher difficulties and even more so on hardcore.

Has anyone tried out hardcore mode yet? I've lost a lot of good characters to HC Elite. My damage output is usually pretty good but sooner or later I walk into an inescapable situation or get killed by a frost mage that's barely visible at the edge of the screen. The game is fun but there are some flaws that become glaringly obvious on higher difficulties and even more so on hardcore.

The community seems to have concluded that you can not complete (elite) hardcore unless you reset the map to farm an early boss called Grell for a gem that gives 3% damage reduction to all sources. Previously it was possible to achieve 100% damage reduction by stacking these gems (with game-breaking results) but the game has been patched to allow for a maximum of total 75% damage reduction from all sources.